We as a newspaper have looked at 2017, coming and going, for much of the week in our news coverage.

What was the biggest impact in your 2017? What is the greatest challenge, moving into the year ahead?

The focus of questions and answers always seem to hover over the same ground: Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey.

We understand. Flooding drove us from our Port Arthur News building at 2349 Memorial, forced us to work from our homes and from our sister paper in Orange. It took more than three months for our building to reopen; there is still work left.

The storm is what has weighed heaviest on the minds of local leaders in Greater Port Arthur, in our cities, our schools, our county. It’s what weighs heaviest on individuals and families in a ravaged community.

It imposes itself on our future, as it weighed on our recent memories. Is there any escaping its impact and continuing weight here?

In a word: No. The cost of the storm in property has surpassed Hurricane Katrina’s. Damage to people’s homes and vehicles may govern their personal well-being and lifestyles for years. If you lost everything, how do you move forward?

So we should fully understand why people think of little but the storm, its impacts and its aftermath, which just won’t go away. It envelops us, chokes us, restrains us, directs us. Maybe there’s a better approach.

No one can forget the storm; the pain and suffering is too recent, the effects too imposing. But there are other things in our world that demand our attention, too, things to redirect us from the hurt and toward the sunlight.

Greater Port Arthur people still have their lives, their faith, their shared history. We have schools and churches, family and friends.

We hold the capacity to learn and grow, to study and to appreciate what is around us. That means the rivers and bayous and the Gulf, waters that usually lap peacefully against our shores.

We have a bounty of museums and good food and a shared culture, a university and a two-year college. We have the capacity to give, as the Christmas season proved. We have the capacity to appreciate.

Yes, we’ve weathered an awful storm and still deal with the hardships it imposed. That won’t stop soon. But we are not without resources. We are a capable people.

What rests ahead of us is a year for rebuilding. But it can also be a year to reboot, to revive, to refresh.

Take a course. Visit the museums. Read that great book you’ve pushed aside.

Love your spouse. Hug your kids.

If you have breath, you have hope.

Thank God. Start there.